Enough Already,
The Name's Too Long

May 26, 2015

The Niagara Falls International Railway Station & Intermodal Transportation Center - a name which is, by the way, a mouthful of grammatically contorted & ponderously laughable exaggeratedly glorified windy pretentiousness and with its nine word name it is an example of name sprawl.

Of the 51 railroad stations in America that presently use the word "Intermodal" in their official name, the longest names have five words: Joseph Scelsi Intermodal Transportation Center; Fort Worth Intermodal Transportation Center; Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center.

While it may have a smaller ridership than any of the stations listed above, the Niagara Falls International Railway Station and Intermodal Transportation Center, at 9-words, will have a bigger name, indeed the biggest, longest name for a train station in America.

Try these tongue twisters…
By Uncle Jacob

Niagara Falls International Railway Station and Intermodal Transportation Center,
Niagara FallsRailway Station and International Intermodal Transportation Center,
Round the rugged rock, the ragged rascal ran.

Niagara Falls Intermodal International Railway Center and Transportation Station
The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday.

Niagara Falls International Transportation Center and Intermodal Railway Station Dyster sees the fleece, DeSantis sees the fleas At least Dyster and DeSantis could sneeze and feed and freeze the fleas.

****

Niagara Falls could ensure no one comes up with nothing longer - by adding a few more transportation buzz-words to the name:

Mayor Dyster said, “Someday soon, visitors will step off the train, not in an industrial district far from the City center, but on the very lip of the great Niagara Gorge, just a short hop from the downtown center and the Falls itself.”

The new station on Whirlpool Street is 1.7 miles from the falls.Which is a short hop.

The present Amtrak station on Willard Avenue is 2.5 miles from the falls.

Which is a medium hop.

While passengers getting off at the present station need only to walk one block to find themselves in a quiet, residential neighborhood, the new station is located in the North End near Cleveland Avenue, one of the most violent and crime ridden neighborhoods Niagara Falls has to offer.

*****

The NF train station - empty.

Ridership and Size of Train Station

How does ridership at the Niagara Falls current station stack up against that of other New York municipalities?

In 2013, 32,549 passengers boarded or got off a train in Niagara Falls. The majority of these were not tourists, but commuters going to or coming home from work, Amtrak says.

Compare that with the Buffalo-Depew station, which handled 123,067 passengers. Another 38,397 boarded or disembarked at Buffalo’s Exchange Street station - for a total of 155,616 Buffalo passengers.

Elsewhere around the state, even Utica has Niagara Falls beat by far, with 67,213 passengers. Rochester has 141,576, Schenectady has 61,803, Syracuse 154,903, Croton-Harmon’s got 48,694, New Rochelle has 81,757, Poughkeepsie 95,083, and even little known Rhinecliff has 184,452.

The funny thing is that, even though train travel to all these places surpasses that to Niagara Falls, none has a train station anywhere near the size of the one Dyster is building.